Essential Photography Books
Posted May 16th, 2010 by admin with No Comments
I’ve found that the more I learn about photography, the more there is to learn. It’s all so simple when you’re starting out – pick up a camera, stick it on full auto, point it at a subject and click the shutter. Then you pick up a book someone has recommended, digest it thoroughly, and then realise that it’s a little more involved than just shoving the camera in someones face. For me, this is one of the joys of photography – I’ve learned so much in the past few years, but I still have so much to learn.
On my photography journey, I’ve read a fair few books. The following are will hopefully elevate your photography up a level or two, and as a result come thoroughly recommended:
The Digital Photography Book – Scott Kelby
There are three volumes of this book, and Volume One was the very first photography book I purchased. Scott Kelby is the Editor and Publisher of Photoshop User Magazine, as well as being a superb photographer in his own right, and this series of books are written in a, “I want to to know how to take a picture of a beautiful landscape / stunning portrait / fantastic macro etc, but I don’t want to know the technical details, ta very much”.
For example, the chapters are fairly self-explanatory. Shoot At Your Lens’ Sharpest Aperture, Don’t Shoot Down On Flowers and, The Golden Rule Of Landscape Photography, to name but a few. Each takes up two pages at the most, so are all easy to digest.
For me and my curious nature, this “shoot first, ask questions later” approach works well. I found that once I’d taken a decent shot by following the book, I was inspired to find out why it was a good shot by carrying out further research. These books don’t weigh you down with technical details, but will hopefully inspire you to learn more and to take great pictures.
The Photographer’s Eye – Michael Freeman
When I read this book, photography started to make sense. If Kelby’s books are a gentle introduction to photography, Freeman’s tome plants its hand firmly between your shoulder blades and pushes hard. This isn’t a how-to, but a when, where and why type of book.
It’s a natural progression from Kelby’s works, as it explains the various compositional and design elements that contribute to a “good” photograph. For example, each chapter is broken down into subsections; Design Basicstouches on Contrast, Gestalt perception, Rhythm and Visual weight, to name a few. Graphic & Photographic Elements covers Horizontal lines, Curves, Vectors, Focus and Motion, and Composing With Light and Colour touches upon Chiaroscuro and key, Colour Relationships and Black and White.
This isn’t a nice easy read over a cup of tea and a digestive, but an essential piece of work that needs to be studied and applied. If you only buy one book from this list, this should be it.
Digital Photography Masterclass – Tom Ang
In some ways this is similar to Freeman’s book as Ang discusses composition in some depth, but his book isn’t so specific. Instead, it’s divided into four distinct sections - Mastering Your Camera, Developing Your Skills, The Digital Darkroom and Advancing Your Photography.
Each section is subdivided into “tutorials” – for example, section oneMastering Your Camera is subdivided into five tutorials; tutorial one “key camera controls” discusses shutter settings and depth of field, and tutorial four “obtaining the best image” touches upon lens qualities, methods of focusing and zoom or prime lenses.
What I particularly like about this book is that Ang analyses an image at the end of each tutorial. For example, tutorial eight “using available light” in theDeveloping Your Skills section looks at a shot of a cathedral interior, and breaks the image down – in this case, aberrations, accurate verticals and recovering highlights. Another nice touch is the “assignment” tutorial, in which Ang analyses images taken by other photographers.
I also enjoyed the The Digital Darkroom tutorial, which covers various image editing workflow techniques. Subjects covered here include curves and tone, hue and saturation and working in RAW, all extremely useful for the beginner and experienced photographer alike.
The Complete Guide to Professional Wedding Photography – Damien Lovegrove
Thinking of becoming a professional wedding photographer? You crazy fool, you. However, if you are, you’d do far worse than to read this excellent book.
Damien Lovegrove is an extremely succesful wedding photographer, and it’s not difficult to see why – there are some stunning photographs in this book. However, this isn’t all about “How to take fantastic wedding photographs” – this book also covers planning the shoot (so unbelievably important I can’t even begin to explain), digital post-production workflow (again, incredibly useful as you really don’t want to spend hours processing each shot…time is money, remember), and, perhaps most importantly, life and business strategies.
I’ve met a lot of creative people in my life, and one skill that most of them don’t have is business acumen. Let’s face it, all we want to do is take nice photographs, design nice websites and make nice music, and we’re not really interested in the business side of things. However, this is what separates successful creatives and ones who aren’t – knowing how to run and market a business is perhaps more important than what you do in the business.
Lovegrove covers this in depth, and there are around 100 pages dedicated to sales, marketing and profits. Yes, he discusses photographic style, light and so on, but the business side of things is emphasised, and rightly so.
Exposures – Jane Bown
This isn’t a how-to book. It doesn’t discuss apertures, shutter speeds or composition, but is quite simply a collection of sublime portrait photographs.
Jane Bown is a portrait photographer and has worked for The Observer newspaper since 1949. What marks her out from other portrait photographers is that she only ever uses natural light, and she’s apparently used the same camera for the last 40 years.
This is a collection of beautiful, inspiring photographs, and deserves a place on your coffee table. Heck, if you don’t have a coffee table then buy one just for this book.
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